UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday asked more than 30 top officials to offer their resignation so he can move quickly to take control of the world body's bureaucracy, aides said.

Letters were sent out asking all officials at the assistant secretary-general level and up to submit their resignations, the aides said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Most of the officials at the most senior levels work under contracts that expire at the end of February.

But the letters signal that Ban wants to replace some of these even sooner, the aides said.

Most of the officials affected by the request would be replaced in coming weeks but some would be asked to stay on, they said.

"I can't really say this is normal," said one senior official when asked about the letters.

"We all have contracts until the end of February, and most secretaries-general have kept on most of the top staff," said this official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Jean-Marie Guehenno of France, the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, is expected to be among those spared, at least for the coming months.

One idea under consideration, U.N. sources said, is dividing the peacekeeping department in two, with perhaps an American heading one part of it and France the other. Another possible reorganization would combine the existing disarmament and political affairs departments and put them under one undersecretary-general who would also be responsible for leading anti-terrorism programs, the sources said.

Ban, a South Korean who succeeded Kofi Annan on January 1, has been trying to ensure balance in his choice of top aides among permanent Security Council members instrumental in his election and key developing nations.

He has also promised to include women among his top appointees, including the key post of deputy secretary-general, which is expected to go to a woman from sub-Saharan Africa and be named next week.

Ban to date has named only a handful of appointees, choosing veteran Indian diplomat Vijay Nambiar as his chief of staff, award-winning Haitian broadcast journalist Michele Montas as his spokeswoman, Mexican environmentalist Alicia Barcena Ibarra as undersecretary-general for administration and management, and senior British diplomat John Holmes as undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

All but Holmes had been U.N. staff members. Nambiar was an adviser to Annan, Barcena was Annan's chief of staff and Montas worked in the U.N. broadcasting division.

In her 1997 autobiography, the late Katharine Graham of the Washington Post described her father as an assimilating Jew who didn't talk about his Jewishness to his Episcopal-church-going children. He was "involved in Jewish charities, causes, and international issues.

"He was not a Zionist, however, believing strongly that he was an American citizen first and foremost."

That's odd. Her father, the financier Eugene I. Meyer Jr., who bought the Washington Post in the 1930s, is a figure in Zionist history. Behind the scenes, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis turned to Meyer again and again for money to support the Jewish settlement in Palestine. Meyer met with Brandeis's Zionist klatches, personally lobbied his friend FDR on their account, and agreed to head the University Zionist society—an organization to build support among Jews on campus (per Brandeis's letters, edited by Melvin Urofsky and David W. Levy, and Peter Grose's Israel in the Mind of America).

So was Katharine Graham lying about her father?

Well, no. Despite Meyer's support, even Brandeis conceded late in life that "his heart was never in Zionism and he did this largely on my account." So Meyer was merely tithing—to something he didn't believe in. This speaks to an interesting feature of the Israel lobby: It has long counted on support from assimilationist Jews who were lukewarm on the idea but went along under pressure from their nationalist Jewish friends.

Consider Meyer's counterpart at the NYT: former publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger. When Sulzberger died in 1968, the Times obit was emphatic about his views. "[Jewishness] was to him a religion, not a nationality. He did not believe Jews to be a race or a people, and, like Mr. Ochs [his father-in-law], was deeply opposed to the Zionism movement..."

Deeply opposed. Successful assimilating German Jews like Sulzberger and Meyer loved America. They were becoming big deals in the land of opportunity, they didn't quite see the point of Zionism—though they knew that Eastern European Jews who had fled pogroms were excited by it.

Sulzberger flirted with public declarations of his anti-Zionism. According to Thomas Kolsky's splendid history, Jews Against Zionism, in the 1940s, Sulzberger helped draft the mission statement of the anti-Zionist Jewish organization, the American Council for Judaism—which opposed "all philosophies that stress the racialism, the nationalism and the homelessness of the Jews, as injurious to their interests." Wow.

But in the end Sulzberger dithered and didn't sign on publicly. He wanted to, he told the Reform rabbis who headed the group. But till it got a big following, he just couldn't do so. It would hurt the integrity of the newspaper. Chicken.

Besides, the nascent Israel lobby was already on the Times' case, accusing it of being "a transmission belt for anti-Zionist propaganda." This ticked Sulzberger off. He said the viciousness of the Zionists' attacks were a big reason he had converted to anti-Zionism!

What is my point? Here are two powerful Jews, one a non-Zionist, the other anti-, controlling two of the most important newspapers, and both are afraid to express their views. Some may call that professionalism, I call it abdication: they were holding back on a central issue of the time. The publishers of the New Republic and the New York Sun and Commentary would never cheat their readers of their views of Israel, that's their raison d'etre. Turn it around: if an evangelical Christian editorial writer at the Times started opining against stem-cell research, how long would they last? The very idea is preposterous.

Why didn't these men express their views? I think they were ashamed of their assimilation. And they were outplayed by the nationalists in their community (who included Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, father of Joe Lelyveld, future executive editor of the Times). Kolsky says that the Zionists beat the anti-Zionists not on the issues, but by outsmarting them. They put them on the defensive by saying they were unrepresentative or "self-hating." They allowed them to piously play by the rules—no lobbying! the anti-Zionists declared— while the Zionists were working the White House. Give them credit. Today the Israel lobby works the cloakrooms and paints anyone who criticizes the intimacy of the U.S.-Israel relationship as an anti-Semite; and liberal Jews sigh and walk away.

Lately Richard Cohen of the Washington Post admitted regretfully that the creation of Israel was a "mistake." Sixty years ago a group of Reform anti-Zionist Jews were saying just that: that a Jewish state was an anachronism, it would result in endless violence in the Middle East, and would require support from Jews here, which would make those Jews confused about their allegiance. The two publishers evidently shared many of these views but couldn't take a stand.

So what was the position of liberal assimilating Jews in the Zionist movement? Just what Stokely Carmichael said the position of women was in the black power movement: prone.

The difference between what happened late this week in Washington, D.C. and what happened at the very same time in Washington State is a good example of how people in our nation’s capital are still very much oblivious to what the rest of society thinks is acceptable behavior.

“Hours after changing House rules to reduce favors from lobbyists, it was back to business as usual in Washington…Democrats threw a $1,000-a-person fundraising concert in Washington Thursday night, with Hollywood celebrities, big donors and those lobbyists writing checks to re-elect Democrats…Neither party is doing anything to crack down on campaign money lobbyists give and raise. In fact, under the new rules, lobbyists can still wine and dine members of Congress as long as it’s a campaign fundraiser…Speaker Pelosi’s spokesperson says there were only about 200 lobbyists at Thursday night’s fundraising concert.” (emphasis added)

Ah yes, folks, we should all supposedly sleep easier because ONLY 200 lobbyists came to shower Democrats in cash a few hours after Democrats were in front of the cameras decrying the culture of corruption. Whew, I know I’m relieved.

By contrast, here is Evergreen Politics’ report about what happened in Seattle at a packed forum on a cold and rainy Friday night:

“A panel of legislators were on hand for a Town Hall forum last night (sponsored by Washington Public Campaigns) to promote the idea of public financing of elections for Washington State. Maine State Representative Linda Valentino and Arizona State Senator Ed Ableser made their case: It currently costs less than $3.00 per person per year to set up a fund (it could go into a general fund or a dedicated fund) that contributes enough money to run a primary and a general election campaign…The best result of the clean campaign method is that its winners no longer feel beholden to special interests, have no qualms about kicking lobbyists out of their offices, and can then go sponsor and pass the legislation they really believe is best for their constituencies…Four of our Washington State reps were also on the panel. They all spoke of the temptations of special interest money, and how hard it is to resist. Rep. Mark Miloscia (30th leg. district) admitted, ‘I feel my integrity is tested everyday.’ The first challenge to the status quo will come next week when Representative Shay Schual-Berke (33rd leg. district) sponsors legislation calling for public financing of all Supreme Court and Appellate Court judicial races.”

As I sit here in a hotel room reading the MSNBC report after being at this terrific event here in Seattle, I am simultaneously embarrassed and proud to have worked in Democratic politics. I am embarrassed that, at a time state legislators are putting their political capital on the line to truly clean up politics, many (though not all) of their counterparts in Congress clearly think “reform” is the punchline of a joke. Public Campaign’s David Donnelly says, “It sends a very mixed message to be on one hand saying that they’re clamping down on lobbyists, but then raising money from those very same lobbyists that they say are part of the problem.” I’d say that’s putting it mildly - it’s really making a mockery out of our party’s name by insulting the public’s intelligence and so openly trying to pull a fast one on the American people.

But I am also proud. I met legislators tonight who have guts - real guts - to indict a system they themselves have come up through, and that they are now willing to admit is inherently corrupt. Make no mistake - these are not big-time congresspeople with the huge staffs of yes people and K Street entourages that now insulate our federal representatives from their own constituents, and make sure there is a reelection support system no matter how often they sell out. No, these are actual citizen legislators - people who live out here in the Real World, who can’t bring themselves to lie with a smile about reform like so many folks in D.C. It will be up to the people of Washington State to help these legislators push public financing of elections by creating the grassroots political energy necessary to enact such power-challenging reforms - but after such an energetic showing tonight (and subsequent forums in cities across the state), I’m hopeful public financing is going to happen here, if not this year, then soon in the future.

Unfortunately, I’m not as optimistic about the Beltway. Everyone in Washington, D.C. knows that the only way to clean up politics is to publicly finance elections. Everyone on Capitol Hill, for instance, read the Roll Call story about how lobbyists already know how to get around the Democrats 100 hours “reforms” and that, as one lobbyist put it, he is “going to be embraced and hugged and kissed [by lawmakers] as long as I’m giving them a check’ for their campaign.” And yet, other than a handful of courageous Democrats who have previously proposed real reform, no one is saying anything about cracking down on the intersection of money and politics.

As states like Washington and New York potentially join places like Maine, Arizona and Connecticut in embracing clean elections, the Progressive States Network will be right there to support these efforts and work with other groups like Public Campaign and Common Cause to make reform a reality. I hope this activity helps pressure Beltway Democrats into pushing public financing, as many of us have prescribed ad nauseum - and I am hearing rumors that at some point this year, we will see some action on Capitol Hill. I sure hope that’s true, but I fear that if it does not come soon, the Democrats’ Money Party faction will be able to deflate its support by claiming that the 100 hours “reforms” already solved the problem, and that public financing is supposedly not “politically realistic” in Congress - even though it has already passed in a Republican state like Arizona and has potential GOP supporters on Capitol Hill.

This is one of the defining issues of our time - it affects every single issue before Congress, from economic policy to foreign policy. Polls show the public is ready for clean elections - as I’ve asked before: are we as a progressive movement ready to put real reform front and center? Or are we going to settle for Partisan War Syndrome, where we merely cheer on symbolic measures that are being used as a trick by our partisan allies in order to prevent real reform? And maybe worst of all, are we going to rationalize our own inaction by claiming that Internet fundraising somehow negates Big Money, even as Big Money continues to outspend us and buy legislation?

The answer will decide whether these burgeoning state efforts become reality, and whether Congress will overcome its bipartisan inertia and end D.C.’s sick culture of corruption for real.

The difference between what happened late this week in Washington, D.C. and what happened at the very same time in Washington State is a good example of how people in our nation’s capital are still very much oblivious to what the rest of society thinks is acceptable behavior.

“Hours after changing House rules to reduce favors from lobbyists, it was back to business as usual in Washington…Democrats threw a $1,000-a-person fundraising concert in Washington Thursday night, with Hollywood celebrities, big donors and those lobbyists writing checks to re-elect Democrats…Neither party is doing anything to crack down on campaign money lobbyists give and raise. In fact, under the new rules, lobbyists can still wine and dine members of Congress as long as it’s a campaign fundraiser…Speaker Pelosi’s spokesperson says there were only about 200 lobbyists at Thursday night’s fundraising concert.” (emphasis added)

Ah yes, folks, we should all supposedly sleep easier because ONLY 200 lobbyists came to shower Democrats in cash a few hours after Democrats were in front of the cameras decrying the culture of corruption. Whew, I know I’m relieved.

By contrast, here is Evergreen Politics’ report about what happened in Seattle at a packed forum on a cold and rainy Friday night:

“A panel of legislators were on hand for a Town Hall forum last night (sponsored by Washington Public Campaigns) to promote the idea of public financing of elections for Washington State. Maine State Representative Linda Valentino and Arizona State Senator Ed Ableser made their case: It currently costs less than $3.00 per person per year to set up a fund (it could go into a general fund or a dedicated fund) that contributes enough money to run a primary and a general election campaign…The best result of the clean campaign method is that its winners no longer feel beholden to special interests, have no qualms about kicking lobbyists out of their offices, and can then go sponsor and pass the legislation they really believe is best for their constituencies…Four of our Washington State reps were also on the panel. They all spoke of the temptations of special interest money, and how hard it is to resist. Rep. Mark Miloscia (30th leg. district) admitted, ‘I feel my integrity is tested everyday.’ The first challenge to the status quo will come next week when Representative Shay Schual-Berke (33rd leg. district) sponsors legislation calling for public financing of all Supreme Court and Appellate Court judicial races.”

As I sit here in a hotel room reading the MSNBC report after being at this terrific event here in Seattle, I am simultaneously embarrassed and proud to have worked in Democratic politics. I am embarrassed that, at a time state legislators are putting their political capital on the line to truly clean up politics, many (though not all) of their counterparts in Congress clearly think “reform” is the punchline of a joke. Public Campaign’s David Donnelly says, “It sends a very mixed message to be on one hand saying that they’re clamping down on lobbyists, but then raising money from those very same lobbyists that they say are part of the problem.” I’d say that’s putting it mildly - it’s really making a mockery out of our party’s name by insulting the public’s intelligence and so openly trying to pull a fast one on the American people.

But I am also proud. I met legislators tonight who have guts - real guts - to indict a system they themselves have come up through, and that they are now willing to admit is inherently corrupt. Make no mistake - these are not big-time congresspeople with the huge staffs of yes people and K Street entourages that now insulate our federal representatives from their own constituents, and make sure there is a reelection support system no matter how often they sell out. No, these are actual citizen legislators - people who live out here in the Real World, who can’t bring themselves to lie with a smile about reform like so many folks in D.C. It will be up to the people of Washington State to help these legislators push public financing of elections by creating the grassroots political energy necessary to enact such power-challenging reforms - but after such an energetic showing tonight (and subsequent forums in cities across the state), I’m hopeful public financing is going to happen here, if not this year, then soon in the future.

Unfortunately, I’m not as optimistic about the Beltway. Everyone in Washington, D.C. knows that the only way to clean up politics is to publicly finance elections. Everyone on Capitol Hill, for instance, read the Roll Call story about how lobbyists already know how to get around the Democrats 100 hours “reforms” and that, as one lobbyist put it, he is “going to be embraced and hugged and kissed [by lawmakers] as long as I’m giving them a check’ for their campaign.” And yet, other than a handful of courageous Democrats who have previously proposed real reform, no one is saying anything about cracking down on the intersection of money and politics.

As states like Washington and New York potentially join places like Maine, Arizona and Connecticut in embracing clean elections, the Progressive States Network will be right there to support these efforts and work with other groups like Public Campaign and Common Cause to make reform a reality. I hope this activity helps pressure Beltway Democrats into pushing public financing, as many of us have prescribed ad nauseum - and I am hearing rumors that at some point this year, we will see some action on Capitol Hill. I sure hope that’s true, but I fear that if it does not come soon, the Democrats’ Money Party faction will be able to deflate its support by claiming that the 100 hours “reforms” already solved the problem, and that public financing is supposedly not “politically realistic” in Congress - even though it has already passed in a Republican state like Arizona and has potential GOP supporters on Capitol Hill.

This is one of the defining issues of our time - it affects every single issue before Congress, from economic policy to foreign policy. Polls show the public is ready for clean elections - as I’ve asked before: are we as a progressive movement ready to put real reform front and center? Or are we going to settle for Partisan War Syndrome, where we merely cheer on symbolic measures that are being used as a trick by our partisan allies in order to prevent real reform? And maybe worst of all, are we going to rationalize our own inaction by claiming that Internet fundraising somehow negates Big Money, even as Big Money continues to outspend us and buy legislation?

The answer will decide whether these burgeoning state efforts become reality, and whether Congress will overcome its bipartisan inertia and end D.C.’s sick culture of corruption for real.

Sat Jan 06, 2007 at 07:14:13 AM PST

I was listening to a highly respected radio station (NPR) on my way home from work yesterday. They were reporting on John Negroponte's resignation as Director of Intelligence and likely appointment as Deputy Secretary of State. The correspondent stated (without a hint of irony) that Negroponte was highly respected in Washington. I thought to myself, WTF?

Since Judas Iscariot embraced Jesus, Jerusalem has not seen such a kiss.

After being boycotted by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert for years, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was invited to the official residence of the Prime Minister of Israel two weeks ago. There, in front of the cameras, Olmert embraced him and kissed him warmly on both cheeks. Abbas looked stunned, and froze.

Somehow the scene was reminiscent of another incident of politically-inspired physical contact: the embarassing occurrence at the Camp David meeting, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak pushed Yasser Arafat forcefully into the room where Bill Clinton stood waiting.

In both instances it was a gesture that was intended to look like paying respect to the Palestinian leader, but both were actually acts of violence that--seemingly--testified to ignorance of the customs of the other people and of their delicate situation. Actually, the aim was quite different.

* * *

ACCORDING TO the New Testament, Judas Iscariot kissed Jesus in order to point him out to those who had come to arrest him.

In appearance--an act of love and friendship. In effect--a death sentence.

On the face of it, Olmert was out to do Abbas a favor. He paid him respect, introduced him to his wife and honored him with the title "Mr. President".

That should not be underestimated. At Oslo, titanic battles were fought over this title. The Palestinians insisted that the head of the future Palestinian Authority should be called "President". The Israelis rejected this out of hand, because this title could indicate something like a state. In the end, it was agreed that the (binding) English version would carry the Arabic title "Ra'is", since that language uses the same word for both President and Chairman. Abbas, who signed the document for the Palestinian side, probably did not envisage that he himself would be the first to be addressed by an Israeli Prime Minister as "President".

But enough trivia. More important is the outcome of this event. After the imposed kiss, Abbas needed a big Israeli gesture to justify the meeting in the eyes of his people. And indeed, why shouldn't Olmert do something resounding? For example, to release on the spot a thousand prisoners, remove all the hundreds of checkpoints scattered across the West Bank, open the passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?

Nothing of the sort happened. Olmert did not release a single prisoner--no woman, no child, no old man, no sick person. He did indeed announce (for the umpteenth time) that the roadblocks would be "eased", but the Palestinians report that they have not felt any change. Perhaps, here and there, the endless queue at some of the roadblocks has become a little shorter. Also, Olmert gave back a fifth of the Palestinian tax money withheld (or embezzled) by the Israeli government.

To the Palestinians, this looked like another shameful failure for their President: he went to Canossa and received meaningless promises that were not kept.

* * *

WHY DID Olmert go through all these motions?

The naïve explanation is political. President Bush wanted some movement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which would look like an American achievement. Condoleezza Rice transmitted the order to Olmert. Olmert agreed to meet Abbas at long last. There was a meeting. A kiss was effected. Promises were made and immediately forgotten. Americans, as is well known, have short memories. Even shorter (if that is possible) than ours.

But there is also a more cynical explanation. If one humiliates Abbas, one strengthens Hamas. Palestinian support for Abbas depends on one single factor: his ability to get from the US and Israel things Hamas cannot. The Americans and the Israelis love him, so--the argument goes--they will give him what is needed: the mass release of prisoners, an end to the targeted killings, the removal of the monstrous roadblocks, the opening of the passage between the West Bank and Gaza, the start of serious negotiations for peace. But if Abbas cannot deliver any of these--what remains but the methods of Hamas?

The business of the prisoners provides a good example. Nothing troubles the Palestinians more than this: almost every Palestinian clan has people in prison. Every family is affected: a father, a brother, a son, sometimes a daughter. Every night, the Israeli army "arrests" another dozen or so. How to get them free?

Hamas has a proven remedy: to capture Israelis (in the Israeli and international media, Israelis are "kidnapped" while Palestinians are "arrested"). For the return of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Olmert will release many prisoners. Israelis, according to Palestinian experience, understand only the language of force.

Some of Olmert's advisors had a brilliant idea: to give Abbas hundreds of prisoners as a gift, just for nothing. That would reinforce the position of the Palestinian president and prove to the Palestinians that they can get more from us this way than by violence. It would deal a sharp blow to the Hamas government, whose overthrow is a prime aim of the governments both of Israel and the USA.

Out of the question, cried another group of Olmert's spin doctors. How will the Israeli media react if prisoners are released before Shalit comes home?

The trouble is that Shalit is held by Hamas and its allies, and not by Abbas. If it is forbidden to release prisoners before the return of Shalit, then all the cards are in the hands of Hamas. In that case, perhaps it makes sense to speak with Hamas? Unthinkable!

The result: no strengthening of Abbas, no dialogue with Hamas, no nothing.

* * *

There is an old Israeli tradition: when there are two alternatives, we choose the third: not to do anything.

For me, the classic example is the Jericho affair. In the middle 70s, King Hussein made an offer to Henry Kissinger: Israel should withdraw from Jericho and turn the town over to the king. The Jordanian army would hoist the Jordanian flag there, announcing symbolically that Jordan is the decisive Arab presence in the West Bank.

Kissinger liked the idea and called Yigal Allon, the Israeli foreign minister. Allon informed the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. All the top political echelon--Rabin, Allon, the Defense Minister Shimon Peres--were already enthusiastic supporters of the "Jordanian Option", as were their predecessors, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan and Abba Eban. My friends and I, who, on the contrary, advocated the "Palestinian Option", were a marginal minority.

But Rabin rejected the offer categorically. Golda had publicly promised to hold a referendum or elections before giving back even one square inch of occupied territory. "I will not call an election because of Jericho!" Rabin declared.

No Jordanian Option. No Palestinian Option. No nothing.

* * *

Now the same is happening vis-à-vis Syria.

Again there are two alternatives. The first: to start negotiations with Bashar al-Assad, who is making public overtures. That means being ready to give back the Golan Heights and allow the 60 thousand Syrian refugees to return home. In return, Sunni Syria could well cut itself loose from Iran and Hizbullah and join the front of Sunni states. Since Syria is both Sunni and secular-nationalist, that may also have a positive effect on the Palestinians.

Olmert has demanded that Assad cut himself off from Iran and stop helping Hizbullah before any negotiations. That is a ridiculous demand, obviously intended to serve as an alibi for refusing to start talking. After all, Assad uses Hizbullah in order to put pressure on Israel to return the Golan. His alliance with Iran also serves the same purpose. How can he give up in advance the few cards he holds and still hope to achieve anything in the negotiations?

The opposite alternative suggested by some senior army commanders: to invade Syria and do the same there as the Americans have done in Iraq. That would create anarchy throughout the Arab world, a situation that would be good for Israel. That would also renovate the image of the Israeli army that was damaged in Lebanon and restore its "deterrence power".

So what will Olmert do? Give the Golan back? God forbid! Does he need trouble with the 16 thousand vociferous settlers there? What then, will he start a war with Syria? No! Hasn't he had enough military setbacks? So he will go for the third alternative: to do nothing.

Bashar Assad has at least one consolation: He does not run the risk of being kissed by Olmert.

The president is widely expected to soon announce a plan for Iraq that hinges on sending more U.S. military forces to Iraq, above and beyond the 140,000 currently in that country. And while there has been some bipartisan cheerleading for such a prospect, there has been less discussion of where the troops for this famous surge would come from, what it would cost, or how it would further unravel a national-security, budget-planning process that has served the nation well since the Second World War.

Budgeting for Iraq and the so-called Global War on Terror (or GWOT), is already out of control. In large part because of its “emergency” status, the nation, and even Congress, does not know what the funding for this war covers or how it has been spent. It is virtually impossible for Congress or the American people to track Iraq spending.

The Bush Administration has demonstrated that it vastly prefers to fund Iraq as an “emergency”, allowing it to sidestep the kind of detailed justification and reporting that Congress seeks in the regular budget process and has started to request on Iraq. A decision to “surge” forces this winter would only exacerbate the problem, since it will be coming long after the Pentagon has already put the next “emergency” budget request together.

Demands and Recommendations Rebuffed

The December 2006 Iraq Study Group report urged the administration to return to normal budget procedures: “costs for the war in Iraq should be included in the president’s annual budget request starting in 2008.” The White House has made no response.

Later in December Congress again urged this change. In a letter, Senate Budget Committee Chair Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) and his House counterpart Representative John Spratt (D-SC), along with Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), asked the president to “include in [his] budget the best possible projection of war costs beyond 2008, and to specify war costs with the same level of detail as items in the regular budget.”

There is no indication the president, or the Pentagon, will agree to this request, which will in all likelihood lead to a continuation of the dance we have grown familiar with: forces go into Iraq; they are not budgeted in advance; an “emergency” budget is put together to cover them and shipped to the Congress on a “fast track”, leading to little scrutiny and yet more funding.

The opacity of Iraq and GWOT spending has increasingly been the focus of concern. Last year, Congress, led by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Gregg, asked the Pentagon to change its budget practices and submit Iraq budget requests as part of the regular defense budget, providing equally detailed justification for the funding. The White House chose to interpret this legislation as inconsistent with the president’s constitutional authority.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States has committed more than $507 billion to these struggles, three quarters of it for operations in Iraq, 91 percent of it for the Pentagon and over 90 percent as “emergency” funding. In all likelihood, the White House in February will request another $100 billion in emergency funding, as well as a roughly $50 billion down payment for the same “emergency” in the next fiscal year.

If Congress approves all of these requests, the GWOT will be at least as costly as any other war in American history, save World War II, when more than 12 million at a time served in the U.S. military. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, very conservatively, that the United States could spend another $320 billion over the next nine years in Iraq alone, putting the total war costs over $1 trillion.

If U.S. deployments do not decline, these costs could rise significantly. The annual trajectory for GWOT spending is ever upwards, from $31.4 billion in 2001-02 to a possible $170 billion for 2007 alone. To tether these astronomical figures closer to the ground, this fiscal year we are likely to spend $14 billion a month on the GWOT, or $3.3 billion a week. Put another way, emergency money for the GWOT will consist of roughly a quarter of all the funds the Pentagon will receive for the current fiscal year.

Transparency, Interrupted

There are serious issues of good government, accountable budgeting and spending control buried in this pile of dollars. When the budgets for Iraq and GWOT are put together in the Pentagon, they consist of “lump sums” for categories of spending, not detailed budgets for specific programs or requirements. For example, the Army discloses what it is requesting for “operations and maintenance”, but does not detail the funding for specific provisions, supplies, spares, or logistics. Nor does the Pentagon distinguish between the uses of these emergency funds and the regular budget funds for non-Iraq activities. Congress has been asked to take on faith that all of these funds are needed, that they are all dedicated to Iraq and the GWOT, and that other regular budget funds are not being siphoned into the war.

When the Iraq and GWOT budgets come to the Congress, the accompanying justification is thin and the emergency designation means that only one set of committees—the appropriators—get to look at it. The Budget and Armed Services Committees don’t get to scrutinize the funding, unlike the normal defense budget.

These requests have also frequently included funding for items that are questionably linked to Iraq and GWOT needs and, in any case, are certainly not urgent, such as the long-term transformation of the Army, or helicopters that will take two or three years to deliver. The forthcoming GWOT emergency request is rumored to include funding for the military’s new F-35 fighter.

And once funds for Iraq and the GWOT are appropriated, there is little reporting back to the Congress on how the funds have been actually been spent. Repeated legislation requiring detailed reporting has not been followed by the Defense Department. It argues that because so much of the funding is mixed with regular budget funds for operations, maintenance, etc., that it simply cannot sort it out by emergency funds or by particular operations.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports to Congress the type of program that funds its diplomatic and foreign assistance budget, but provides no reporting on the actual execution of programs and projects.

And because it is budgeting for the war six months at a time (by now there are usually two emergency requests a year), the Defense Department has done no forecasting of what the Iraq War and the GWOT are likely to cost in the future. It says the war is unpredictable, so they cannot make a forecast, leaving it up to Congress’ Budget Office to make its own estimates without any DOD input.

This rolling approach to funding the war every six months makes a clear break with past wartime practices. Historically, even wartime budgets have been put through the normal budget process in the Pentagon within a year or two of the start of combat. Today we are entering the seventh year of this unusual budget process.

Over the past six years, this practice has undermined both the administration’s budget-planning system and the normal scrutiny and control Congress has given to the defense and foreign policy budgets. The budgetary consequence is real: projections of future deficits are meaningless, because Iraq costs are not forecast into the future as part of the regular budget and actual spending is counted only after the fact. The national security consequence is equally serious: neither the Congress nor the American people have a clear view of how much the war actually costs, how we are spending the funds or how much it is likely to cost in the future. The nation’s fiscal—and therefore security—health is at stake.

Gordon Adams is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 1993-97, he was associate director for National Security and International Affairs at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

The new year began on the hopeful note that Bush's illegal war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group's unanimous conclusion that the US needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld's removal as defense secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates, the thumbs down given by America's top military commanders to the neoconservatives' plan to send more US troops to Iraq, and new polls of the US military that reveal that only a minority supports Bush's Iraq policy, thus giving new meaning to "support the troops," are all indications that Americans have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.

When word leaked that Bush was inclined toward the "surge option" of committing more troops by keeping existing troops deployed in Iraq after their replacements had arrived, NBC News reported that an administration official "admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one." It is a clear sign of exasperation with Bush when an administration official admits that Bush is willing to sacrifice American troops and Iraqi civilians in order to protect his own delusions.

The American establishment, concerned by Bush's egregious mismanagement, moved to take control of Iraq policy away from him.

However, recent news reports and analysis suggest that Bush has turned his back to the American establishment and his military advisers and is throwing in his lot with the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. This will further isolate Bush and make him more vulnerable to impeachment.

In the January 5 issue of CounterPunch John Walsh gives a good description of the struggle between the American establishment and the neocons.

Peter Spiegel, the Pentagon correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, reported on January 4 that the neocons have used the failure of the administration's policy in Iraq to convince Bush to launch an aggressive counterinsurgency requiring the buildup of troop levels by extending deployments beyond the agreed terms.

Raed Jarrar suggests that the Shi'ite militias, such as the one led by Al-Sadr, are the intended targets of the "surge option." There seems no surer way to escalate the conflict in Iraq than to attack the Shi'ite militias. For longer than the US fought Germany in WW II, 150,000 US troops in Iraq have been thwarted by a small insurgency drawn from Iraq's minority population of Sunnis. It hardly seems feasible that 30,000 additional US troops, demoralized by extended deployment, can succeed in a surge against the Shi'ite militias when 150,000 US troops cannot succeed against the minority Sunnis.

The reason the US has not been driven out of Iraq is that the majority Shi'ites have not been part of the insurgency. The Shi'ites are attacking the Sunnis, who are forced to fight a two-front war against US troops and Shi'ite militias and death squads.The US owes its presence in Iraq, just as the colonial powers always owed their presence in the Middle East, to the disunity of Arabs. Western domination of the Muslim world succeeded by not picking a fight with all of the disunited Arabs at the same time.

Attacking the Shi'ite militias while fighting a Sunni insurgency would violate this rule. If Bush ignores US military commanders and expert opinion and accepts the surge option advanced by the delusional neocon allies of Israel's right-wing Likud Party, US troops will be engulfed in general insurgency. This is why General John Abizaid resigned on January 5. He wants no part of the Republican Party's sacrifice of US soldiers to sectarian conflict.

In recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, Republican Senator John McCain, who believes in the efficacy of violence and not in diplomacy, pressed General Abizaid to request more US troops to be sent to Iraq. General Abizaid replied as follows:

"Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together.

And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no."

Bush is like Hitler. He blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy. Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion. In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin.

By manipulating Bush and provoking a military crisis in which the US stands to lose its army in Iraq, the neoconservatives hope to revive the implementation of their plan for US conquest of the Middle East. They believe they can use fear, "honor," and the aversion of macho Americans to ignoble defeat to expand the conflict in response to military disaster. The neocons believe that the loss of an American army would be met with the electorate's demand for revenge. The barriers to the draft would fall, as would the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons.

Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz set out the plan for Middle East conquest several years ago in Commentary Magazine. It is a plan for Muslim genocide. In place of physical extermination of Muslims, Podhoretz advocates their cultural destruction by deracination.

Islam is to be torn out by the roots and reduced to a purely formal shell devoid of any real beliefs.

Podhoretz disguises the neoconservative attack against diversity with contrived arguments, but its real purpose is to use the US military to subdue Arabs and to create space for Israel to expand.

Not enough Americans are aware that this is what the "war on terror" is all about.

Patrick Cockburn

Published: 05 January 2007

Ali A Allawi, until recently an Iraqi minister, is one of Iraq's most respected Shia politicians of the post-Saddam era. His study of the crisis in Iraq is by far the most perceptive analysis of the extent of the disaster in his country, and how it might best be resolved. It is in sharp contrast to the ill-thought-out maunderings of experts and officials devising fresh policies in the White House and Downing Street.

At the centre of Mr Allawi's ideas on how "to pull the Middle East from its death spiral" is finding a means to meet the fears generated inside and outside Iraq by the tectonic changes within the country.

This means recognition of the gains of the Shia and the Kurds, but also restraint on their part so the Sunni do not see themselves as being marginalised. It requires that the anxieties of Iraq's neighbours be allayed and the regional powers "Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran" be involved in a final settlement.

It may be too late. Mr Allawi speaks of finding a way "to save America's face" while the US exits Iraq, but this will be difficult while George Bush still has dreams of victory and is sending reinforcements.

But Mr Allawi's study, which is based on familiarity with all the main players gained during his years in government, is the first real attempt to suggest the Middle East might pull out of its death spiral. Born into a Baghdad family in 1947, Mr Allawi acquired most of his higher education abroad, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, LSE and Harvard, then working for financial companies and merchant banks.

He is closely related to prominent Iraqi politicians and joined joined the anti-Baathist opposition in 1968 as a member of Iraq's exile community in London where much of the early opposition to Saddam was based.

Mr Allawi fears that the Shia ascendancy in Iraq will lead to the persecution of Shia in countries where they are a minority, such as Saudi Arabia.

There is already a rekindling of anti-Shia rhetoric in a remarkably similar rerun of the pattern that accompanied the Saudi-led campaign to contain the Iranian revolution in the 1980s.

After the invasion in 2003, Mr Allawi was plucked from his post as a Middle East specialist at St Anthony's College, Oxford, and was appointed Trade Minister in the first post-Saddam government. In 2004, he was made Minister of Defence, and served as Finance Minister.

He is widely viewed by Western governments as one of the more capable of Iraq's post-Saddam politicians.

Although a member of a prominent Shia family, he has largely managed to avoid the sectarian divides of Iraqi politics and he has taken a strong stance against the Shia militias responsible for much of the inter-ethnic violence that has blighted Iraq over the past year. At present, he is a senior adviser to the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki and divides his time between London and Baghdad.

A problem is that whatever President Bush and Tony Blair thought they were doing when they invaded Iraq in 2003, the outcome has been very different. The limits of US military and political power have been exposed by its failure to overcome the resistance of the five million-strong Sunni community.

"Growth has slowed, but it hasn't collapsed," said Jim O'Sullivan, senior economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Conn.

The nonmanufacturing index was expected to fall to 57, the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 61 economists. Estimates ranged from 54 to 60.

The Treasury's benchmark 10-year note rose almost a half point, pushing the yield down to 4.60 percent at 5:05 p.m. yesterday in New York.

The National Association of Realtors reported yesterday that contracts to buy previously owned homes fell 0.5 percent in November after a 1.5 percent decline the prior month. Economists had forecast a 0.7 percent increase, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

For more than a decade, Somalia has been Exhibit A in the Hall of Statelessness, a place where the state had not merely weakened into irrelevance but disappeared. Somalia's statelessness had defeated even the world's only hyperpower, the United States, when it had intervened militarily to restore order. Fourth Generation war theorists, myself included, frequently pointed to Somalia as an example of the direction in which other places were headed.

Then, over the past several weeks, a Blitzkrieg-like campaign by the Ethiopian army seemed to change everything. A Fourth Generation entity, the Islamic Courts, which had taken control of most of Somalia, was brushed aside with ease by Ethiopian tanks and jets. A makeshift state, the Transitional Federal Government, which had been created years ago by other states but was almost invisible within Somalia, was installed in Mogadishu. The Somali state was restored – or so it seems.

This direct clash between the international order of states and anti-state, Fourth Generation forces is a potentially instructive test case. If the Ethiopians and their sponsors succeed in re-creating a self-sustaining Somali state, it may put Fourth Generation elements elsewhere on the defensive. Conversely, if the Somali state again fails, it will suggest that outside efforts to restore states are unlikely to succeed and the future belongs to the Fourth Generation.

It is too soon to know what the outcome will be. However, we might want to ask the question, what does each side need to accomplish in order to succeed?

The first thing the Transitional Federal Government and its Ethiopian and other foreign backers must accomplish is to restore order. Many Somalis welcomed the Islamic Courts because they did bring order. They shut down the local militias, made the streets safe again and began the revival of commerce, which depends on order.

Can the Transitional Federal Government do the same? Its problem is that its main instrument is the Ethiopian army, which is hated by many Somalis. Its own forces are largely warlord militias. If the TFG fails to bring order, not only will it have failed to perform the first task of any state, it will make the Islamic Courts look good in retrospect. Precisely this dynamic is now playing itself out in Afghanistan.

The pro-state forces' second task is in tension with the first: the Ethiopian Army must go home soon. "Soon" here means weeks at most. If the Ethiopian invasion turns into an Ethiopian occupation, a nationalist resistance movement is likely to emerge quickly. Such a nationalist resistance would have to ally with the Islamic Courts, just as the nationalist resistance in Iraq has been pushed into alliance with Islamic 4GW forces, including al-Qaeda. Non-state forces are usually too weak physically to be picky about allies.

The third task facing the TFG is to split the Islamic Courts and incorporate a substantial part of them into the new Somali state. In the end, political co-option is likely to do more to end a 4GW insurgency than any action a military can take.

What about the Islamic Courts? What do they need to do to defeat the state?

They have already accomplished their first task: avoid the Ethiopian army and go to ground, preserving their forces and weapons for a guerrilla war. Had they stood and fought, not only would they have lost, they would have risked annihilation. Mao's rule, "When the enemy advances, we retreat," is of vital importance to most 4GW forces.

The next task is harder: they must now regroup, keep most of their forces loyal, supplied, paid and motivated, and begin a two-fold campaign, one against the Ethiopians or any other foreign forces and the second against the Transitional Federal Government. This will be a test of their organizational skills, and it is by no means clear they have those skills. Time will tell, time probably measured in weeks or months, not years.

Against occupying foreign forces, the Islamic Courts will need to wrap themselves in nationalism as well as religion, so that they rather than the TFG are seen as the legitimate Somali authorities. The fact that the TFG has to be propped up by foreign troops makes this task relatively easy.

Against the TFG itself, the Islamic Courts' objective is the opposite of the government's: it must make sure order is not re-established. Here, terror tactics come into if play, and if car bombs, suicide attacks and the like spread in Somalia, it will be a sign the Islamic Courts are organizing.

The Islamic Courts may have an unlikely ally here in the old war lords and clan militias. The Islamic Courts suppressed these elements, but their comeback will help, not hurt them. They were and may again become the main source of disorder, and all disorder works to the Islamic Courts' advantage.

The new government in turn needs to suppress these forces just as the Islamic Courts did, but it may be unable to do so, not only because it has no real army of its own but also because it has warlords and militias as key constituents. This mirrors the situation in Iraq, where the Shi'ite-dominated government cannot act against Shiite militias because it is largely their creature.

How will it all turn out? My guess is that in Somalia as elsewhere, the dependence of the wanna-be state on foreign troops will prove fatal. In the end, Fourth Generation wars are contests for legitimacy, and no regime established by foreign intervention can gain much legitimacy. On the other hand, if the Islamic Courts cannot organize effectively, the new government could win by default. Either way, it is safe to say that the outcome in Somalia will have an impact far beyond that small, sad country's borders.

Blather from the USFed to cite an inflation threat and their vigilance to fight it speaks not to rising wages and rising prices from cost push. It addresses, nay screams, to their fear of a falling USDollar and the associated systemic rise in prices. Why? Because the United States has become fatally dependent on foreign finished products, foreign energy supply, and foreign credit, reminiscent of a Third World nation. All that is missing is the goose step among marching military columns. The gold price and silver price and oil price all will rise with a falling USDollar. And let’s not forget the mind numbing destructive failed policy in the entire Middle East, from each and every corner. Iraq is the quicksand. Iran is the powderkeg. Israel is the friction. Europe stands in the crossfire. Russia lies in wait, in far more control than the sleepy lapdog US press & media choose to report. For that would be to proclaim a return to the Cold War.

That icy belligerence of conflict is surely here, but on the energy front, which has earned the title the Global Energy War by me since 2003, ignited by the Shock & Awe of the Iraqi War. The only thing shocking is the degree of failure. The only thing of awe is the stubbornness to continue the course. The words mindnumbing fit more and more with each passing day. Ironically, the decisions not to bomb Iran have kept the USDollar up, and the crude oil price down. The decisions not to resume bombardment of Beirut have kept the USDollar up, and the crude oil price down. In the meantime, the USDollar remains fatally wounded, yet Uncle Sam, who leaks bills from his wallet, continues to walk upright. He is a hollow replica of his former robust self. Numerous friends and foes alike prop him up. One must actually check his pulse to see if he is alive. It might just be a skull & crossbones under the royal robes worn thin by the years. The price of gold, silver, and oil will benefit from the inevitable repeated USDollar declines, which will occur less often than expected for practical reaons.

A sell-off in commodities -- from copper to crude oil -- over the past few sessions is telling some veteran market watchers that a slowdown in economic growth, likely one of considerable magnitude, is already underway.

In the last two days alone, commodity prices seem to have fallen off a cliff. Copper futures, which tumbled 7.7% on Wednesday, fell another 1.8% on Thursday -- and have dropped 27% from their December highs.

Crude-oil prices fell nearly 5%, following a 4% drop in the previous session. The front-month futures contract was trading at its lowest level since June 2005. See Futures Movers.

Here's a daily copper chart. The price has gapped down and continued downward last week:

The reason copper is predictive?

Most commodities are used in the production of industrial goods. When producers start demanding fewer raw materials, it becomes noticeable in commodities prices much earlier than in official economic statistics, explained Barry Ritholtz, chief market strategist at Ritholtz Research & Analytics.

Copper, in particular, is often used as a reliable economic indicator because of its widespread use in production.

"Copper is the metal with a Ph. D. in economics," Ritholtz said. "It's used in the wiring of homes and offices, in plumbing in construction, and it's also a key component in electronic goods.

Stockpiles of copper monitored by the LME have doubled since the start of last year. The exchange said earlier today copper stocks held in its warehouses had risen another 1,700 tonnes to total 194,875 tonnes

However it also reported that cancelled warrants, which represent warehouse stocks booked and due for delivery, have climbed to just over 17,000 tonnes, suggesting copper might soon start leaving LME warehouses

"With the large inflows of metal believed to be nearing an end, net falls in LME stocks could start to resume, which would support prices," said UBS Investment Bank analyst Robin Bhar

Copper prices in New York had the biggest weekly decline in 10 years as slower U.S. economic growth and a building slump reduced demand for the metal used in homes, appliances and cars.

Global stockpiles are at the highest since June 2004. The U.S. economy grew at the slowest pace of 2006 in the third quarter, led by a decline in homebuilding. Builders are the biggest consumers of copper. Prices tumbled 12 percent this week, touching a nine-month low.

``I don't think anybody has predicted it would go this low,'' said Karen Poniachik, Chile's mining and energy minister and chairwoman of state-owned Codelco, the world's biggest copper producer.

According to Bloomberg, the slowdown in the US housing market is a prime reason for the drop:

Construction spending fell for a third month in November as homebuilding fell by 1.6 percent, the eighth-straight drop, the Commerce Department said this week. Fewer Americans signed contracts to buy previously owned homes in November, suggesting continuing weakness in the real estate, an industry group said yesterday.

``If overall housing sales stay slow, you could easily pare another 30 or 40 cents off of copper,'' Frank McGhee, head metals trader at Intergrated Brokerage Services Inc., said yesterday. ``Copper is a leading indicator. It's very sensitive to perceived economic conditions.''

Something to keep in mind is the futures markets have become the high tech market of the late 1990s. A ton of money flooded into the futures markets over the last 6 years. This is one of the reasons for the huge price run-ups over the same period. Increased demand = higher prices. Some of this selling may simply be people taking profits. In other words -- this could be speculators leaving the market.

However, the fundamentals indicates there may simply be weaker demand. Housing construction in the US is down. Overall stockpiles are up. This indicates copper production may be too high right now, anticipating a level of demand not warranted by the underlying economic fundamentals.

In the Executive Summary Portion, they outline the basics of the plan. Here they are (I summarize and those items in parens are my comments):

Ground forces must accept longer tours of duty for several years. National Guard units will have to accept increased deployments during this period.

Equipment shortages must be overcome by transferring equipment from non-deploying units. The military industry must be mobilized to provide replacement equipment sets urgently (Investment opportunities?? - My comment in the parens)

The President must request a dramatic increase in reconstruction aid for Iraq (How about New Orleans first?)

The President must request a substantial increase in ground forces end-strength. The President must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this generation (How about his daughters first?)

The President and his Representatives in Iraq must forge unity of effort with the Iraqi government.

Deep in the proposal, they basically support what Thomas Ricks said in the book Fiasco. In this book, he showed how the US Military totally blew the identification of the insurgency then blew the actual fighting of the insurgency. These recommendations call for:

Secure Baghdad first - The US Military will be playing "policeman" in the Country's capital.

"Live Among the People" - This means "bye bye green zone". All the "warriors" who have been talking about the big war from the security of the Green zone and the internet cafes, gyms etc. are going to learn what real war is like. They are going to move to tents, foxholes and 24 hour vigilance because they will be out among the people.

Huge amounts of money going to reconstruction. Imagine, we cannot reconstruct New Orleans but we are now going to fix Baghdad.

Overall, this is nothing more than an escalation plan. A surge implies a quick hit and run type thing but even in the AI study, they call for this to be many years long. That is an escalation not a surge.

My predictions:

If you are an active reservist - see ya later. Good luck, you are going to Iraq for at least two years.

If you are active duty - move your family home because you are gone for a long time.

If you are IRR (Individual ready reservist) - Get your finances and family care in order. You are either going to Iraq or you are going to backfill current active troops on bases in the US and Germany.

There will be a "surge" in US deaths and combat injuries.

The only way a true escalation would work is to send in at least 100,000 troops. 10,000 to 20,000 are what we call "speed bumps"

Editor’s Note: From both the White House and Congress, there's lots of talk about how important it is to look to the future, not dwell on the past. But one of the painful lessons from the Iraq debacle is that Official Washington's failure to understand the past -- and the real histories of key players -- contributed to the present catastrophe.

In this guest essay, two former U.S. intelligence analysts -- Ray McGovern and W. Patrick Lang -- argue that the United States can ill afford letting the Iraq War-era liars off lightly, even if that means taking a hard look back over the past several years:

Lies have consequences.

All those who helped President George W. Bush launch a war of aggression—termed by Nuremberg “the supreme international crime”—have blood on their hands and must be held accountable. This includes corrupt intelligence officials. Otherwise, look for them to perform the same service in facilitating war on Iran.

“They should have been shot,” said former State Department intelligence director, Carl Ford, referring to ex-CIA director George Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin, for their “fundamentally dishonest” cooking of intelligence to please the White House. Ford was alluding to “intelligence” on the menacing but non-existent mobile biological weapons laboratories in Iraq.

Ford was angry that Tenet and McLaughlin persisted in portraying the labs as real several months after they had been duly warned that they existed only in the imagination of intelligence analysts who, in their own eagerness to please, had glommed onto second-hand tales told by a con-man appropriately dubbed “Curveball.”

In fact, Tenet and McLaughlin had been warned about Curveball long before they let then-Secretary of State Colin Powell shame himself, and the rest of us, by peddling Curveball’s wares at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003.

After the war began, those same analysts, still “leaning forward,” misrepresented a tractor-trailer found in Iraq outfitted with industrial equipment as one of the mobile bio-labs. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, then working for NBC News, obliged by pointing out the equipment “where the biological process took place... Literally, there is nothing else for which it could be used.”

George Tenet knows a good man when he sees him. A few weeks later he hired Kay to lead the Pentagon-created Iraq Survey Group in the famous search to find other (equally non-existent, it turned out) “weapons of mass destruction.”

(Eventually Kay, a scientist given to empirical evidence more than faith-based intelligence, became the skunk at the picnic when, in January 2004, he insisted on telling senators the truth: “We were almost all wrong—and I certainly include myself here.” But that came later.)

On May 28, 2003, CIA’s intrepid analysts cooked up a fraudulent six-page report claiming that the trailer discovered earlier in May was proof they had been right about Iraq’s “bio-weapons labs.” They then performed what could be called a “night-time requisition,” getting the only Defense Intelligence Agency analyst sympathetic to their position to provide DIA “coordination,” (which was subsequently withdrawn by DIA).

On May 29, President George W. Bush, visiting Poland, proudly announced on Polish TV, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.” [For Consortiumnews.com's contemporaneous challenge to the mobile-lab report, see "America's Matrix."]

When the State Department's Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts realized that this was not some kind of Polish joke, they “went ballistic,” according to Ford, who immediately warned Colin Powell that there was a problem.

Tenet must have learned of this quickly, for he called Ford on the carpet, literally, the following day. No shrinking violet, Ford held his ground. He told Tenet and McLaughlin, “That report is one of the worst intelligence assessments I’ve ever read.”

This vignette—and several like it—are found in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, who say Ford is still angry over the fraudulent paper. Ford told the authors:

It was clear that they [Tenet and McLaughlin] had been personally involved in the preparation of the report... It wasn’t just that it was wrong. They lied.This, of course, was just one episode in the long drama of deliberate perversion of intelligence to grease the skids for justifying the invasion of Iraq—the most serious foreign policy blunder in our nation’s 230-year history.“Hubris,” the overweening arrogance that brought down many a protagonist of the Greek tragedies, is an aptly-chosen title for the revealing Isikoff/Corn study.

Some of the ground they cover is familiar to us Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), who well before the war started chronicling the Bush administration’s lies. What makes the book different is its cumulative impact—the detailed, first-hand accounts of lie and cover-up, lie and cover-up, ad nauseam .

Protagonists need a supporting cast. And many of the dramatis personae were intelligence analysts—former colleagues of mine.

The question lingers: How could they allow themselves to be seduced into enlisting in the meretricious march to mayhem in Iraq? Much of the answer (and much of the reason this misguided war is allowed to continue) lies in the fact that those planning and facilitating the war in Iraq are not fighting it.

Unlike Vietnam, no one “important” is being asked to put life and limb at risk; nor, generally speaking, are their children. Interestingly, most of our troops come from towns with populations of less than 10,000.

Theirs Not To Reason Why

Into the valley of death rode the 3,000.

“U.S. Toll in Iraq Reaches 3,000” screamed The Washington Post ’s lead story on New Year’s Day, which included the Pentagon’s count of more than 22,000 troops injured. As is known, the Pentagon does not count dead Iraqis, but reputable estimates put that number at about 650,000.

As we pass this sad milestone, it behooves us to pause and consider the enormity of what has been allowed to happen—and how to prevent it from happening again. The House and Senate Intelligence committees in the new Congress need to reinstitute genuine oversight, including a close look at why so many intelligence officers cooperated in the dishonesty leading to war. We owe that to the 25,000, not to mention the 650,000.

Start with Tenet and McLaughlin and include Alan Foley, the retired chief of CIA’s Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control (WINPAC) and devotee of imaginative intelligence on bio-labs, uranium from Niger, aluminum tubes and other artifices to justify an unnecessary war.

Most of the suspects owe their meteoric careers in large measure to Defense Secretary Robert Gates who, as head of CIA analysis and later as CIA director, institutionalized the politicization of CIA analysis more than 20 years ago, mostly by moving malleable managers up the pay scale.

Another beneficiary of Gates is George Tenet who, as staff director of the Senate Intelligence committee in 1991, helped Gates overcome strong opposition to his confirmation as director. It is a safe bet that Gates returned the favor by recommending that Tenet be kept on as director when George W. Bush became President in 2001.

Gates learned well at the knee of his original mentor, William Casey, President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director. They and those that followed had remarkable success in perpetrating the dual crime of which, long ago, Socrates was accused: making the worse case appear the better and corrupting the youth.

Thus, in September 2002 when Senate Intelligence committee Democrats Dick Durban and Bob Graham insisted on a National Intelligence Estimate on “weapons of mass destruction” before Congress voted for war, George Tenet found himself the ultimate beneficiary of Robert Gates’ finely tuned Geiger counter for corruptibility.

The pliant managers promoted originally by Gates were happy to conjure up a formal estimate written to the specifications of their frequent visitor, Vice President Dick Cheney. [For more on Gates's record, see Consortiumnews.com's "The Secret World of Robert Gates."]

Those who tell consequential lies need to be held accountable. That includes, of course, Colin Powell. Congress needs to ask the former Secretary of State why he decided to disregard the objections of his own intelligence analysts and turned instead to faith-based intelligence for war.

He has expressed regret for his scandalous performance at the U.N., but only because it put “a blot on my record.” We would like to see him try that out on Cindy Sheehan and 3,000 other bereaved mothers.

Powell and I [McGovern] grew up a mile from each other in the Bronx. There we had a word for his forte, which remains a ubiquitous scourge in Washington. It was both noun and verb: “brownnose.” And it has nothing to do with skin color.

It was a familiar word before I [McGovern] learned “sycophant.” Webster’s provides this meaning: “To ingratiate oneself with, to curry favor with; from the implication that servility is equivalent to kissing the hinder parts of the person from whom advancement is sought.”

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, put the effects of all this most succinctly in a floor speech last year:

This war was launched without an immediate threat to our families... Radical "know-it-all" ideologues here in Washington bent facts, distorted intelligence and perpetrated lies designed to mislead the American people into believing a third-rate thug had a hand in the 9/11 tragedy and was soon to unleash a mushroom cloud.

Much is being said today about honoring the sacrifices of our fallen soldiers. Perhaps the best way to do that is to find out who did the misleading and hold them to account before they do it again.

Ray McGovern was an Army infantry/intelligence officer before his 27-year career as a CIA analyst. W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel, served with Special Forces in Vietnam, as a professor at West Point and as Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East (DIA). Both are with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. (This story originally appeared at TomPaine.com.)

Today Saddam was hanged. Instead the bunch of eunuchs comprising Bush, Blair, Cheney, their side kicks, and their handlers should have been hanged. But they will never be hanged because 30-35% of the people who elect them live in a media-engineered "consensus trance.(1)" So long as the 33-35% of electorates in the western world continue to live in their surreal, make believe, so-called "free" world, the rest of the world can’t have peace.

Every USAmerican must learn this term… Gohar!

"Gohar" [pronounced Go’-haar; verb, noun] is a term used in the state of Bihar of India to describe total decimation of a community.

Gohar is engineered against weaker castes in Bihar by upper castes, aka the ruling castes. Well known Goharists are the big landlords, feudal mentality, and ruthless ways to assert their rights on lands, often others’ lands, illegally occupied. A Gohar is invariably engineered for imagined crimes. If a lower caste peasant refuses to till the land of high caste landlord, or if the men of lower caste refuse to perform menial work for the upper castes, the entire community can be Gohared.

Gohar involves planned attack on the villages of the lower castes. Operational plan is drawn up with military precision. Professional murderers, arsonists and rapists are invited to the hacienda of the lord. These are people from all castes because Goharists believe in professionalism and core competency [favorite theories in the US armed forces]. They are wined and dined, paid cash, 50% advance, 50% after the job is done. Then the plan is executed.

The attack invariably takes place after midnight. When the world is asleep……the Goharists rise to decimate.

The Goharists roll out to the target village in motorcycles, jeeps, and tractors with trailers, armed to the teeth with guns, petrol bombs and swords. Swords are nice weapons: when the Goharists kill they can actually say that they had a nice warm blood bath. Bullets are used sparingly, and often by the cowards.

The Goharists reach the target village and surround it. The leader gives a signal. The arsonists fire their salvos of petrol bombs to set the huts on fire. When the huts are on fire people run out and try to save whatever meager belongings they have. When they come out the sharpshooters shoot the men, leaving the women to be caught and raped by professional rapists. The children are of course casually thrown into burning huts to be roasted alive in front of mothers being gang raped.

As dawn creeps over the horizon, all one can see is the smoldering fire and the ashes, and the dead bodies, and the living dead, and the barely living brutalized women and children. I doubt if any journalist has seen a Gohar in action. I have not seen any but I know of one that took place back in the 1970s.

I wish that every western citizen, particularly those in the US forces, understands this term because the US Government and its lackeys have been directly or indirectly involved in a Gohar in virtually every developing country on earth, just as European colonialists were before the 1950s.

Thus far the men and women in western mainstream media have only reported US Gohars from the safe distance of their hotel room as embedded journos that the Goharists wanted them to see. I truly doubt if any would ever be able to maintain their sanity when they see one true Gohar in action from close proximity. I say this because I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not automatons; on the contrary I believe that they are human, possibly programmed-humans. Nevertheless, human.

The scaled up US Gohars

Every US citizen should know that in the last 100 years, the US Government has employed "Gohar" in nearly every country of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Whilst an Indian Gohar destroys about 250-300 people every decade, the American Gohars since 1899 have decimated probably closer to 100 million if we take into account "collateral damage". That averages out to about one million dead for every year of the 20th century. Some democidographers, like R.J. Rummel2 [see Rummel’s website http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/ ], would have us believe that mega murderers were Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, General Pinochet, General Yahya Khan, and the likes. But who was behind them? Analyze any of these instances of mega murders and it invariably leads to substantial role of the US Government and the US elite. The United States of America shines as the world’s only GIGA-MURDERER, ten times over.

The better known US Government Gohars include the ones in their own country where they killed an estimated 12 million Red Indians and caused the deaths of tens of millions of African slaves, then Japan [first country to be nuked] and Germany [mindless bombing to "shock ad awe"], then Korea, then Vietnam, ………and the Iraqi Gohar has been going on for over the last three years. Latest report indicates over 655,000 Iraqi civilians have been Gohared for their OIL. That makes the US barely 655 Kilo-MURDERER, 200K PLUS EVERY YEAR. The lesser known ones are kept in the basement of the government offices, US Government Offices. If the truth be ever known, "people are going to hang us", as Bush senior said some years ago of what they do within the four walls of the White House.

The ruling elite have convinced the Americans and Europeans that the rest of world hates them. A "professionally trained-in-the-art-of-murder" GI is brain-washed to cut throats, cut off hands, cut out the tongues…because the rest of the world hates the western way of life. Some way of life, some way of killing, some way of defending freedom! Some historical absurdity? You bet.

Any difference?

Scaled up Gohars of the United States seeks total control over nations….. not to export democracy but to take control of people’s resources, the natural resources which local communities have used to ensure their livelihoods for over six millennia. True Gohar seeks to take control of the key resource of weaker castes….LAND.

Earlier the Europeans fought amongst each other to divide the rest of the resource rich world among them and killed innocent men, women and children. Often mindless killing merely to assert racial superiority, as mindless as the assertion of caste superiority of the badland Bihar’s Goharists. With globalization of fascism under the US flag these bird-brained bastards have lined up for the spoils. Like vultures, after the hyenas are gone.

The global Gohars of the US decimates entire nations. It is scaled up operation, vast in scope, awesome in spectacle shown at prime time and grand for the spectators. It pumps up the adrenaline for all: the Goharites, the MSM reporters and the vast sheeple spectators. For them it is spectacle; and it also pumps up the rudimentary libido of the eunuchs.

Leave nothing alive…kill everything living

The American Goharists, aka neocons with PNAC for the global village, should know that all the villages around the world are theirs for the taking. So, I say this,

"Come on Goharists, shoot every man, woman and child on earth……that will leave about 300 million Americans and 470 million Europeans=nice tidy total population of 770 million on earth, same as 1750AD population, to claim all the lands, all the water, all the forests, all the animals, all the natural resources all over the world.

Why bother about diplomatic niceties and the elaborate charade of declaring innocent people as "terrorists? Just blow them up like you blew up the twin towers.

[And this is my message to Tony Blair and his ilk……When the British came to India they had never seen a tiger; they were used to fox hunting. They thought that every animal has to be about the same size as a fox! When they accompanied Indian Maharajas on tiger shoot and confronted a tiger in full fury, they realized that actually a fox is a different animal that they killed using five hundred hounds and a thousand riders. In India men kill tigers, alone, face to face. But what the British historians never mention in history books is that behind every photograph of a British LORD with his prized tiger shoot is the story of a pair of trousers quietly sent to the local dhobi [washerman] soiled with shit. British shit. Very soon we shall be seeing soiled trousers of US marines, everywhere. If we are all animals, nature has taught us only one way to react. And there is no scope for flight because we’ve nothing to lose. But most importantly, Tony Blair’s trousers, after the Iraq disaster, should be hanged in the British museum; because time is ripe….museums must store historical artifacts in real time.]

And, of course, the rest of the world must fight the American Goharists. When they catch the marines alive, they have every right to hang them, high. They have every right to ensure that each one of the Goharist dies as much a painful death as he or she inflicts on the rest of us. The Vietnamese did them in. Iraqis are doing what the Goharists deserve.

Expand further east, and we are just about ready. The Goharists have no idea how every Shia and Sunni Mussalman felt on 30th of December, 2006. All differences were submerged to condemn the Bushist Goharites. None of their intelligence agencies can ever fathom the level of hatred we Hindoos and Mussalmans have for the US Government. Steeped in the crass, corrupt, Christian Goharism, they have failed to understand the Asian mind. The west Asians that the perverts call the MID-EAST, as if between two "civilized" world of USAmerica and Australia there is some region that falls in between, are truly Asians with civilization going back to the era when your ancestors lived naked up on the trees.

The hanging of Saddam has turned 1 billion Indians, possibly five billion third world citizens against the US Government. All that prevents these billions of people from openly boycotting anything American is the co-opted minions of neoconservative Goharists supported by mercenaries of the Goharists. Use them, now, for tomorrow it may be too late. Hang us all.

The American Goharists in uniform

Is there any difference between a bunch of illiterate mercenaries of Bihar’s badlands and the Americans in uniform? Why, I think Kissinger is absolutely right when he says,"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." Just as the feudal landlords in the badlands of Bihar fete out the mercenaries, Kissinger and his Goharists feed these men in US-Uniform the best Monsanto-bacon, genetically modified eggs, genetically modified corn-flakes, to metamorphose every gene in these humans to turn them into murderous louts. Thanks to Kissinger, and Baker, and Negroponte, and Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld, and Rice, and…every preppy pimp in the power corridors of DC.

This bunch of "dumb, stupid animals" is used to protect the interest of the Goharists who wish to control the world? Whose agenda these dumb, stupid animals further?

* They fight and lay down life to ensure that soda pop laced with pesticides is sold to third world countries?* They fight and lay down lives to ensure that nice smelling soaps, detergents, shampoos, and perfumes are sold to stinking sweaty third world denizens?* They bomb farmers, rape women and shoot children to ensure that genetically modified seeds of Monsanto are sold to every farmer to destroy nature’s biodiversity the world over?* They bomb civilians to make way for Kellogg’s cornflakes?* They shoot millions on earth at will to ensure that US registered companies steal oil, and every conceivable natural resource the thieves brigade in the White House can think of, world-wide?

This global dance of the evil has many manly sights and sounds as well:

"Some of the dead were mutilated by having "C Company" carved into their chests; some were disemboweled. One GI would later say, "You didn't have to look for people to kill, they were just there. I cut their throats, cut off their hands, cut out their tongues, scalped them. I did it. A lot of people were doing it and I just followed. I just lost all sense of direction."

And why did the "C Company" cut up and mutilated the dead bodies of unarmed civilians? Did they merely lose "all sense of direction?" Can even the most evil Goharist in Bihar’s badlands lose "all sense of direction?"

Or is the truth what Layla Anwar (3)said in her dispatch [22/12/2006] from Iraq

I will tell you but sit still and don't freak out.It is the agony of realizing that a "Third world", "Arab", "majorityMuslim" country has managed to pierce the Beast with it's deadlyrudimentary arrows.The Beast is now trapped like a bull in a Corrida, giving its finalkicks before falling to the ground, inert.

An Asian woman’s intellect is worth more than a million bloody marines.

The eunuchs don’t fight

The eunuchs don’t fight because they are neither male nor female. When they think male, they are tormented; when they think female, they feel tormented. Therefore, these bird-brained Machiavellian "Never-do-an-enemy-a-small-injury" cowards make others do their dirty job. They hand the flag to these "dumb stupid animals" and tell them to fight for the flag. And these dumb stupid animals do just that…it is fun and these dumb, stupid animals get paid for having a bit of fun. Any different from badland Bihar’s Goharists?

The days of the likes of Wilfred Owen (4), when men in uniform could philosophize the futility of mindless violence are over.

If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

For the illiterate, dumb, stupid animals in uniform, in plain English, dulce et decorum est, Pro patria mori means "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country." So die, son, and while you kill, inflict as much pain on every peaceful people on earth. Because die you must. There is no salvation for you. But one day each one of you would see in broad daylight the old lie: dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

Have a nice blood bath

In the grand old tradition of medieval Bihar, every American soldier should carry a sword to enjoy a warm fresh blood bath without soap or shampoo. And then plant the star spangled banner on the slit neck of a man or the dead body of a raped woman. It is macho! And I beseech…...

Come on man, if you are man enough slit the guys, rape their women…….plant your flag and sing your national anthem. And retire to your neighbourhood pub to talk about your manliness over a pint of lager….fighting for democracy, freedom, and liberty of the poor raped dead……………………land!

The United States of America has about 225 year long history. How much trouble, how much pain, how much suffering this one Genetically Engineered Frankenstein has caused nations all over the world and also within their own national boundary is beyond calculation in their short history? One can’t measure grief in dollar terms. The people of the United States of America can’t ever compensate the millions of people their government has destroyed in their name. Never. Even over a millennium.

"We are aware that History can be cruel in the short run but in the long run it is most merciful……. But we possess many things [the USAmericans] don't. We viscerally belong to this Land. We can trace our genealogy back millenniums." [ibid]

And in the same vein, someone closer to DC said the following words, in 1854…..."Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons….….There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people….…..Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them."(5)

Asia is our land. We are Asians. Our farmers have tilled the land, sown the land, and harvested their crops…..all by hand. We shall continue to do so, year after year.

Robert McNamara, following 1964 Chinese nuclear bomb blast, blared, "We have enough nuclear bombs to drop that would equal 14 tons of TNT per man, woman and child in China." Bravo, Bob! Where would it leave your own men, women and children? And the North Pole and the South Pole……..and your own rivers, valleys, and forests? Was it momentary lapse of reason or were you already institutionalized? Never mind, history is relentless; the people deserve their leaders.

Arun Shrivastava is a management consultant.He lives in Delhi and can be contacted on arun1951@yahoo.com

2. R.J. Rummel; http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/. Although Rummel is a good researcher, the unfortunate thing about his thesis is the attempt to distill out the true barbarity of the US Government. Not once does he say, in any of his papers that the US Government is the world’s sole Giga-murderer.